


Training Days

by disgraceful



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Book: Squire, Corus (Tortall), Original Character(s), Series: Protector of the Small
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22868764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disgraceful/pseuds/disgraceful
Summary: Keladry gets a taste of how Alanna felt as she dons a disguise to join the new Kings Own recruits for a week.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 109





	Training Days

After dealing with the Haresfield bandits and clearing the royal forest of immortals, Third Company returned to Corus; Kel and the griffin in tow.

Though they would still ride at a moments notice, the coming snow would keep all but the most determined indoors. Returning was important to Kel as she had more squire training that hadn’t been attended to while riding after bandits and spidrens. Namely her flying lessons courtesy of Raoul and the tilting field. Raoul also made sure that she was properly outfitted with armour of her own. Kel appreciated the armour more than the spreading bruises under griffin scratches but lessons continued regardless as well as the awkward encounters in the women’s baths.

The Own also used this time to train up new recruits. While the riders recruited in the spring giving dropouts time to go home before the harvest started or snow fell The Own used the impassable mountain roads as a way to keep most recruits on.

“Sure we keep the first couple weeks a bit harder to discourage the ones that would run at the first sign of spring melt” Raoul explained to Kel over dinner in the mess hall when she questioned this practice. “Gives those that won’t last a chance at getting home, but we don’t lose them all this way” Dom quipped reaching for the bread “its how they kept me on!” The men laughed, Kel who knew that Masbolle was in fact nearly due east and could be reached in even the highest drifts if one wanted to simply raised an eyebrow at the sergeant who grinned.

“They basically do the same things with the pages” Raoul continued, ignoring his sergeant, “time to help bring in the crops and make their way to Corus but makes it hard to go home after you stick around long enough”

Kel remembered a conversation she had had with Lord Wyldon in her probationary year, after she had fought with Joren he had expected her to want to run home. His only comment had been that it would be hard to pass the mountains at that time giving no thought that she would insist on staying regardless.

Kel was pulled out of her thoughts by the sound of her knight master suddenly growing quiet. That almost never meant something good for her; if people thought that the men of The Kings Own were bad for their pranks, they didn’t want to hear about the Knight Commander.

“Say Kel” Raoul’s voice was sweet like honey and the men quieted as they turned to their commander “how would you like to give your personal opinion on the recruits abilities?” Kel stared at her knight master, he was often giving her lessons in commanding that she didn’t see herself as needing. Testing out new recruits was something a person in charge of a lot of people did, and something in his voice made her doubt that he wanted her simply watching the tests from the side lines.

* * *

“I don’t want to question you my lord, but...” Kel trailed off unsure how to tell her knight master that this was insane. She stood in front of a mirror, he was helping to cut her hair even shorter and rubbing an ash paste into her mousy brown locks.

Lalasa had just about wept when Lord Raoul had asked her leave a Own issued set of clothes loose on Kel, having it perfectly tailored to her would be a give away and they needed to leave the shirt particularly loose, Kel might have been impressed with the shade of red her knight master turned when he said that if she had been able to look at him in the eyes. Lalasa did so though she also took the rest of Kels things to mend while glaring at Raoul.

Now looking at herself in the mirror she wondered if this had been how Alanna had felt, Kel only had to dress this way for a few days, a week at most whereas Alanna lived as Alan for over eight years. Looking back at her was no longer Kel, but Dellon of Hallowscove. Lord Raoul had decided that that would be a close enough name that she would still respond to it and not give away his game. She could go by Del even. With the baggy clothes hiding her muscles developed from training and budding breasts she looked like a broad-shouldered lad strong from helping in the fields not a squire who had been training for knighthood for 5 years. Her mousy brown hair now boarded on black and had been cut close on the sides, Raoul had left the top a bit longer giving him some hair to dye. Kel sighed, she knew her hair would grow soon enough but this would take some getting used to. She still had her dreamer eyes but there wasn’t much they could do about that.

Raoul had talked her into this even though they both knew he could have ordered her to do it and she would go along without voicing her questions but instead he twisted ever argument she had against it. “These lads act differently when they know they are being watched, I want to know how they act and how they train when they don’t know” Kel had brought up the argument that she couldn’t possibly be expected to share the barracks with the lads. She may camp alongside The Own but that was her own tent, and on the road not in the palace, people talked about her enough thank you very much. “Ah see we have a very large number of recruits this year,” Raoul waggled his eyebrows at her, “some of the lads will be lucky enough to have their names drawn to get put up in empty rooms in the squires wing, many aren’t back yet”

Seeing as each man was supposed to supply two horses when they first joined The Own and Peachblossom was well know to be her horse one of the men lent her his Meadowsbreath for her to ride alongside Hoshi, whom she had to call Star until this mad experiment was done as Yamani was not a common language, she hoped Hoshi understood.

Now Kel, or rather Del was standing at attention in a row of fifty young men getting slowly inspected by Lord Raoul, Captains Glasidan and Flyndan, as well as a handful of sergeants, Dom included. As they passed, Lord Raoul’s hard expression softened just a fraction from the scowl he was forcing on his face but Glasidan gave her the same look he had upon their first meeting, as though she were a beetle under his boot. This was a similar look that he had given many of the others, so it didn’t give her away as different.

“Alright now let’s see what those scrawny arms can do, take a sword from Sergeant Hadren” Raoul barked in his best battlefield voice, making most of the lads jump. As she had when she was a page Kel found herself paired off to show various blocks with the sword.

She had been grateful that the men of The Own had been told of Raoul’s game so that they wouldn’t give her away but when she heard Dom open his mouth, she regretted agreeing to this. “So where is that squire of yours, Sir” Dom drawled so much like Neal in that moment that Kel chanced a glace at him to check that her best friend had not taken his cousins place. He had the most shit eating grin on his face when her eyes met his, Kel nearly broke formation to beat it off his face.

She heard Raoul answer but dared no more looks, while she might not need to watch to perform the basic blocks, she didn’t want to become distracted and hit the boy who looked about sixteen too hard. “She’s cleaning my armour, won’t stop asking me so many questions. You know that Keladry is such a chatterbox and gossip, I thought an afternoon rolling chainmail and polishing plate armour would make her too tired to question my teachings” She knew that was a direct dig at her questioning of this, insane, training exercise. The men laughed at the description of Kel as a chatterbox.

Sergeants went around adjusting hands and stances, they gave her small pointers that she knew to be simply nitpicking to give her instructions as they did the others. Before they started staff work they had to run the training yard twice, Kel was glad that she had kept up with her running routines from her page days on top of her other workouts as she was able to keep a steady easy pace while some of the boys broke off wheezing, the captains pounced on them asking why they were so tired from a simple run “how can you expect to chase down a culprit if you cant even run the yard”.

The rest of the morning was simple enough to nearly bore her to tears, a simple demonstration of weapons proficiency and basic fitness. During lunch Kel was glad for the boys’ chatter as it allowed her to listen as Lord Raoul had asked her to, the trainees were left alone in the mess for the first morning to bond, the men of The Own leaving them to their own devices. They seemed to be divided on whether the morning was simply hard or entirely torturous, complaining of muscles that were already sore while Kel tried to decide if she could slip outside for a pattern dance. “How about you, you’re quiet what did you think of this morning” the boys at her table peered at Kel, she recognized the speaker as one of the boys she’d been paired with for staff work. “I um,” Kel coughed deepening her voice slightly “I found it alright, though I don’t know how I’ll feel about it in the morning” The boys laughed and Kel felt any animosity towards her evaporate in a way that it hadn’t when she was a page.

She listened as they talked about their homes, what training they had back home. Most of them were younger sons of nobles but a few were wealthy merchant sons, they would ride south in a months time and recruit more Bazhir from the tribes. The trainees had expected the riding skills and the sword but not so much the staff and hand to hand combat that they were expected to know or learn.

One of the boys had an older sister who was a Queens Rider, she had returned home last summer and whipped him into shape, he was fairing better than most of the others. He didn’t take offence when the other boys laughed at them just warned them if the Knight Commander ever let Commander Buri onto The Owns training yard they were all done for. Kel agreed with him though she didn’t voice it.

She did her best to avoid talking even more than she normally did; She was having a hard time making her voice deeper and sound believable. There was a nice fellow only a year older than herself that told Del that he had wanted to be in the Kings Own for years, he was glad to be a younger son and not forced into knighthood as his older brother had been. Kel was glad that said older brother was already a squire when she was a page.

She used the excuse of needing to use the privy and then getting lost to slip up to her own rooms and feed the griffin, doing her best she only returned downstairs with a couple small new scratches explained away by a tumble over uneven stones.

The afternoon was filled with archery and then hand to hand combat. Kel didn’t have to hold back much in archery, it was a common skill for them for be proficient in. Through all of it Lord Raoul and Captain Glasidan barked orders and corrections, Kel was the only one who wasn’t trembling at the mere sight of the Knight Commander though she did her best to pretend. The hardest part of the day was having to drop her Yamani mask as best she could, letting others see her smile and frown openly.

Kel was able to avoid the same blunder she had made on her first day of page training though it was a near thing. All the trainees were partnered with a solider for this to gauge their strength, Kel had Dom, she knew from the twinkle in his eye this was not by chance. She allowed him to throw her over his hip, slapping the ground a hairs breath too late. Then he had to keep readjusting her grip for her punches, touching her hands more than she would have deemed needed.

A final test was given showing their ability to ride the horses they had provided. At the end of the day Raoul announced that 10 of them would be staying in the squires’ wing until dropouts made room in the trainees’ barracks, he grinned wolfishly at this. Normally they would have used the empty barracks left by The Second but they didn’t need to know that. He called Dellons’ name last, informing him that he would, in fact, be housed with the pages as a squire had returned unexpectedly. Lord Raoul was quick to let the trainees know that this was very temporary, and they would be expected to still be on time despite the further distance to the training yards, any complaints of mistreating the squires or pages would result in immediate dismissal. They were dismissed to groom their horses and bathe.

Kel slipped away from the page’s halls and back to her own rooms to find her Knight Master in his study, her door ajar along with Captains Glasidan and Flyndan. “Kel” Raoul called through the parting door as she fed the griffin some more jerky and put out seed for the birds, when she entered, he asked her for her opinion of the trainees. “many found today quite difficult, think they were duped into believing the Knight Commander was a kind man” the men laughed at that.

She then told them of the red headed northern boy who was stronger with the sword than he seemed, the blond that rushed through his horses brushing to get to his own bath and her other observations. “Doesn’t miss much does she” Glasidan grumbled looking vaguely more impressed with her. Raoul grinned and dismissed her joking that she must be tired after such a hard day. Fixing her knight master with a hard look she closed the dividing door. The men soon heard the sounds of furniture sliding before the sounds of quick feet, the distinct whoosh of a weapon and a griffin squawking. “What in the gods?” questioned Glasidan. Flyn and Raoul were familiar with the sounds of Keladrys pattern dances “I think she is finally getting in her training and work out for the day” Roaul supplied with a grin at Glasidan’s face who had led the training for the day.

The next morning three of the trainees were already gone bringing the number down to 47, three of those in the squire’s rooms were moved to the common barracks. One of them was stupid enough to let Flyndan hear him complain about losing his own room. The uneven numbers forced various of The Owns men to join in the trainees for pairs, Kel found they often partnered her or stood close by, a test of her or being protective she couldn’t say.

The day progressed much as the first had, though more was taught, and they were expected to push themselves harder. She noticed that Captain Glasidan was often near her pushing her harder though she still held back.

Kel found the lessons in marching in lines interesting, as a knight that wasn’t generally something she expected to have to do.

Over lunch the lads opened up to each other and especially to Del, the quiet strong one, who was a good listener and they were sure would make a good foot solider. Kel still stole away at lunch and in the evenings to feed the griffin but had to return for lessons in outdoor survival after supper. She purposely messed up rolling up her tent and sleeping roll small enough times that Raoul yelled at her that even his younger squire knew how to roll up her stuff correctly. They had found that many of the trainees thought that Del was seventeen despite Kel only being fourteen, she had simply gone with it.

“Why doesn’t she show us then Sir” questioned a boy near the back, Klousen, Kel thought his name was. “My squire has better things to do than mess around in here with your sorry lot” Raoul had made them all run around the training yard again for the comment though he clapped Kel lightly on the shoulder when she passed him in the dark.

Each morning Kel rose before she needed to emerge from the pages wing to try to fit in a proper workout, she was going to go soft if Raoul had her continue this much longer she grumbled. By the end of the week they had lost five more, leaving only two more dropping out until Del would need a new reason to not more into the barracks. They had finally started progressing in their training to where Kel felt she no longer had to hold back as much but she still complained to Raoul about her missing her proper training, Raoul jokingly offered to have the tilting fields lit up by torch light before informing her that most people relished a week off.

* * *

Ultain of MiddleRiver had wanted to join The Kings Own since he saw the blue and silver uniforms march through his village when he was a boy, he had trained with anyone who knew anything about weapons that came near his Fief. The first week with The Own was still punishing, he had never known that he had so many muscles that could hurt or that simply moving his arm by the third day would feel like he was dragging it though thick mud.

Everyone else seemed to be feeling the same way except for Dellon of Hallowscove, he seemed almost bored with the workouts and lessons that left everyone one else collapsing into bed as soon as they could. He had broader shoulders than most of the men, handled the practice weapons like they were feather light in his grip until the third day, Ultain went to grab his staff to hand it to him not expecting the weapon to be weighted and nearly dropped it. Del blushed lightly at the aghast look, “didn’t feel right” the older boy muttered.

Dellon was odd, even when Lord Raoul got into his face or yelled, he never looked frightened of the giant man, almost amused in fact. He had asked the other trainees to call him Del, “My least favourite aunt calls me Dellon” he had mumbled gruffly over lunch, a passing sergeant appeared to have to stifle giggles.

That same sergeant had been with Del when he came across them early in the morning before training. Del was on the ground pushing his body up and slowly lowering it using only his arms. The sergeant was counting out the number of times Del raised his body, “Found him using his candle after lights out, seems he thinks being in the page wing gives him an excuse to not follow the rules” Del had ducked his head but continued.

Ultain tried the same movement when he was out of their sight and only managed three before his arms collapsed, the sergeant had been counting past 50 with no sign of stopping. After the first lunch the men began joining them, telling them stories from their time in The Own, a few trainees had to rush out to be sick when the men began embellishing their tales after they had finished eating. Del simply rolled his eyes, though he did look uncomfortable at the tale of Squire Keladry breaking her leg when fighting a centaur alone. This had led to many more questions about the Knight Commanders elusive squire, the men gave new reasons for her absence each day, she had a baby griffin to look after, studying supply, tilting training.

On the ninth day of training one of the corporals, Qasim maybe, rushed up to Lord Raoul, interrupting his berating of a Corus born boy. He informed the Knight Commander of ogres spotted near a village an hour ride south. The man quickly snapped commands to his men to ready 5 squads and their horses, a rest were to stay behind and continue their training. The trainees glanced at each other in worry as the men ran off, leaving only a few that were teaching them hand to hand combat.

“Kel lets go, saddle Peachblossom you’ll need him” Lord Raoul said as he span away rushing towards the stables. Kel? His squire? Was she here watching them? He traded a confused look with Jortan his sparing partner, before he noticed that Dellon had ran hard to the stables after Raoul.

As the trainees voiced their confusion the men of The Own laughed and said that was his squire. Del, or Kel emerged from the stables riding a huge gelding before trotting off behind Lord Raoul.

* * *

Keladry apologized to the trainees when she returned, most of them were wary of her at first, which she understood. So she focused on throwing herself back into her training. She would meet various squads to run drills or practice weaponry with. When the Yamani ladies arrived, she took up morning glaive practice. Raoul soon had her helping teach pole arms to the trainees, while many were quite proficient in the sword many had neglected their staff work. Tilting practice took up many of her afternoons, either on her own chancing the willow ring or flying lessons with Raoul. The trainees began to warm up to her again as she focused on her own tasks seeing that she took her own training almost more seriously than they took theirs.

The men explained it in their own way, pranks, they said were the truest way of bonding. Kel kept well clear of the barracks as the trainees tried to get back at the more experienced men.

\----

Many of the trainees felt a betrayal of sorts when Dellon of Hallowscove revealed herself to be Squire Keladry. They were wary of her at first. Ultain watched her train as best he could amongst his own practice. She rose early he could tell; she was always the first in the mess hall, hair already slick with sweat. The griffin was not a story, she brought him outside sometimes though they were always careful not to touch him. He noticed that the beat-up white dog and little birds that had often been waiting by the fence followed her around.

On the first day the trainees were given off he watched her spar the delicate looking Yamani ladies. He knew that she welded a Yamani glaive, had seen her working through movements slowly with it but to see the twirl of the teak staff and the flash of gleaming metal a blur as the women danced around each other was mesmerizing. He noticed her get knocked down a few times by one woman in particular. Learning that was the Queen welding the heavy staff with deadly precision made him glad he had joined The Kings Own and not The Queens Riders.

He watched as she rode that huge gelding hard down the tilting field before being buffeted back into her saddle hard enough to leave serious bruises when she and Lord Raoul clashed, her week away from tilting did nothing to diminish her skills. He caught sight of her bruised back when she raised her hands above her head one day and could have gasped at the colourful array of bruises, old and new. But she trained as though she could not feel it.

Ultain learnt that while Dellon might have made a good foot solider, eyes downcast and ready to follow orders, Keladry was going to be a great commander. He saw the same look in her eyes that he saw in Lord Raoul’s when he surveyed the men, sizing them up, finding each strength and weakness. He was able to pry the story of the centaur from her, though she downplayed her own involvement, saying that her dog had saved the little girl not her. It was then that he asked her to teach him those movements that had made her shoulders so broad, made her strong. She had narrowed her eyes at him, trying to decide if he was playing around before telling him to meet her just after dawn in the main training yard.

When he arrived yawning she was already spinning the deadly glaive so fast that the blade looked like lightning in the rising light. She walked him through the push-ups she called them, getting him to do ten of them slowly. Then she had him lie on his back, she gently held his feet down while he used his stomach muscles to sit up. He managed 15 before collapsing, when he returned the favour, she stopped at double that before showing him another where she simply held her body up on her forearms keeping her back perfectly straight for as long as she could manage. His muscles gave out after about 30 seconds, arms shaking. When he turned to look at squire Keladry her white dog had jumped onto her back, she turned her head to look at him smiling.

“I see Kel has found someone else to do her predawn torture routine” Ultain looked at the sergeant who spoke, he had been the one counting out her movements the week before. “I can teach your whole squad Dom if you’d let me” Kel countered voice tight from the effort of not moving. She slowly lowered herself allowing the dog to hop off her back. As she sat up he noticed more that she was no longer wearing the practice clothes issued to The Own but ones issued to Squires. These ones fell over her body showing just how strong she was in a way the baggy clothes couldn’t.

Looking at her now in the dawn light he wondered how he had ever thought she really was a boy, her hair shinning in the morning light, her eyes soft. As he watched her collect her weapon, he missed a sharp glare from the sergeant. Ultain couldn’t help but feel glad that he would be riding with Keladry for the next four years if this is what he could expect.


End file.
